Trompe l'oeil
by Katherine Tag
Summary: What is real, and what is not? A journey to some kind of reality.


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Trompe l'oeil

_Many thanks is in order to Tritorella and Missa, who read this over several times, and especially to the anime_writers group, whose posts were extremely well thought out and helpful._

_Written for plnunn's doujinshi contest, and my own amusement._

**WARNING:** This story contains sexual situations of an adult nature. If you are not old enough to read that sort of thing, please find something else. If that sort of thing offends you, feel free to find something else as well. Thanks.

------

It was one of those subtle awakenings, the ones that bleed seamlessly from dream to reality. It had been dark in his dreams, and it was dark here, in this strange room as well. Youji blinked slowly and put a hand on his forehead. Something twinged, then, all down his right arm. He turned his head, and his eyes widened.

Aya -

He was off the couch and kneeling by his unconscious teammate in seconds. He barely noted his own dizziness as he gently turned Aya over and slid a hand down his face to check for a pulse. 

Breathing a sigh of relief at the faint, but undeniably steady sign of life, Youji carefully slid under the younger man, until Aya's head was resting on his thigh. He yanked his cell phone out of his pocket, pressing the speed dial for Omi, but all he got was a woman's voice politely telling him that service was down. A flash of lightning underscored the message, drawing his attention to the window, and a few seconds later, thunder rumbled through the air.

Aya shifted a little, and Youji stroked his hair absently while he tried to remember the mission. It had to have been a mission, that had brought them to this place. Everything was fuzzy still, though, making him wonder if he had a concussion to go along with the shallow cut on his arm, and the equally shallow cut across his stomach.

He started unbuckling Aya's coat when he shifted again, eyes flickering but not opening completely. He peeled the leather trench away from Aya's right side, revealing the black top he habitually wore on missions. His fingers touched a dark wetness spreading over the fabric that could only be blood.

Disentangling Aya completely from his jacket and shirt, Youji lifted him up cautiously to the couch, shoving a pillow under his head before casting about for some sort of first aid kit.

He found a very small one, really just antiseptic and a roll of bandages, in the single drawer of a small table by the door. Finally shaking off the confusion that until this point had been clouding his judgement, Youji opened the door a crack and peeked out into a seemingly deserted hallway. He did a cursory visual check of the dark space, and closed the door quietly. The hallway looked undisturbed. At least they weren't locked in.

His mind reassured for now, Youji turned his attention back to Aya. He wrapped the wounds gently, holding his breath, not knowing if he was hoping Aya would stay unconscious or that he would wake up and berate him for his clumsiness. Aya's eyes stayed resolutely closed, however, and he didn't move during the entire procedure. He put some antiseptic on his cuts as well, but didn't bother to bandage them.

Youji leaned his head against the couch cushions and closed his eyes resignedly. There was nothing he could do but wait out the storm, and hope to God he remembered something that would help them. He could just barely hear the soft rhythm of Aya's breathing underneath the noise of the storm, and despite his best intentions, it lulled him to sleep.

------

When Youji woke for the second time, he was on the couch under Aya's coat, and Aya was gone. He jolted to his feet and looked around wildly. The room was empty, undisturbed. Before, he hadn't had a chance to really look things over, worried as he was about Aya. 

Sitting up, he winced at a painful sting from his stomach. The cut - it was bleeding again, but just a trickle. He ignored it and carefully stood up.

There wasn't much to look over in the room. The couch he was sitting on dominated the room. The small table where he had found the first aid kit stood by the door. Dust lay soft and thick on the floor and the window sills, muting the colors of the room and making it seem like an old photograph. Lightning flashed through the unshuttered window, illuminating the room to a painful brightness. A tall white shape in the corner caught Youji's eye, and, blinking back spots from the sudden light, he lifted up the corner of the sheet to investigate. 

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding as an old fashioned armoire was revealed. He swung one of the doors open, just to make sure it was empty. It was. Everything seemed to be just as he remembered it, except there was no sign of Aya.

Studying the floor, Youji looked for footprints in the thick dust that lay everywhere like a shroud, but it was no use. What looked like his prints were all over the room, along with a few of Aya's slightly smaller shoe size. There were smears in the dust from the door to the spot he had first seen Aya, too, as if someone had dragged a body across the floor. He probably had, he thought wryly, remembering Aya's too pale face.

This disappearance disturbed him. Aya hadn't even regained consciousness while Youji had bandaged him up, and he knew that he had caused at least a little pain. He didn't even know how long he had slept. A glance at his watch told him it wasn't working anyway. The faint green display was flashing 12:00. He couldn't remember when it had stopped, but then, he was usually using it for other purposes than telling time.

Youji poked his head out the door. A hallway stretched outward both to his right and left, as far as he could tell. From the faint light of the window, he could faintly see footprints leading in both directions. He closed his eyes and tried to remember which way they had come in, but it was lost in a red haze. Shrugging, he chose left.

There were no windows in the hallway. Youji found himself wishing for a flashlight of any kind, even if it was a penlight. He opened all the doors he came to, illuminating the hallway slightly, but it was still a matter of feeling along the walls in the dark. The rooms he inspected were eerily similar. Shrouded furniture crouched in the gloom, shutters and curtains hung askew on the windows, and the ubiquitous dust coated everything and dampened every sound.

He kept seeing pale figures just at the edge of his vision, teasing him with their almost faces. He knew it was just his eyes playing tricks on him in the dark, but he looked anyway, hoping to see a more substantial form, a certain familiar face.

The silence hung around him almost as heavily as the darkness did. His footsteps barely made any noises, small puffs of dust floating up from his boots at every step. The house was eerily still; it had none of the comforting rumbles and creaks of an old house settling on its foundations. On a whim, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and tried to call out, but he got the same message as before. He slipped it back into his pocket and mentally crossed his fingers that Omi and Ken were safe.

He hadn't found any other hallways yet, so he followed his current path as it curved around the interior of the seemingly endless mansion. He had almost decided to turn back when he caught a glint of light under a door out of the corner of his eye. Gripping the doorknob, he felt a surge of hope. Aya was in there. Aya was -

Unconscious on a large bed flush against one wall of the room. An oil lamp flickered on the small dresser next to the bed, throwing dancing shadows into the darkest corners. Aya lay still, his head turned away from the door, his bare chest rising and falling minutely.

Youji frowned. Where was Aya's shirt? For that matter, where were his bandages? He distinctly remembered patching his teammate up. He moved toward the bed, gingerly sitting on the edge and touching Aya's shoulder. Aya turned his head in Youji's direction, but didn't open his eyes.

Youji leaned forward. "Relax," he breathed in Aya's ear. "It's just me."

Aya nodded, a barely imperceptible movement that Youji felt more than saw.

"How'd you get here?" Youji asked as he opened drawers, looking for bandages. The gash on Aya's right side was still slowly leaking blood. He tried not to think about how Aya had gotten the wound.

Sighing, Aya turned his head away again. His left hand found Youji's knee, though, and squeezed carefully before dropping back to the bed.

Youji found a full first aid kit in the bottom drawer. He climbed over Aya on the bed, trying not to jostle him too much, and set the kit near the pillows. First he swabbed most of the blood away and then slowly stitched the worst of the cut back together. Taping some gauze over his handiwork, Youji decided that would have to do, until Aya was awake enough to sit up so he could wrap his ribs again.

Closing the kit, he dropped it over the side of the bed and lay back, one hand on Aya's pulse point, the other curled under his head. He was so tired ...

------

Youji woke with a start as a blinding white light filled the room. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, feeling a little dizzy. The lightning that had woken him had also left him mostly blind in the dark room. He blinked a few times, waving his hand in front of his face until he could make out the shadowy outlines of fingers.

He ran his hands through his hair in confusion as he realized where he was. Back on the couch, with Aya's coat over him. He had a fuzzy recollection of Aya on a bed ... was it real? As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the dark stains on his hands, and knew it was blood.

So it had been real.

He sat up and a sharp pain in his abdomen made him gasp. His questing fingers came away sticky with his own blood in the semi-darkness of the room. He felt along the cut carefully. It was deep, but it didn't feel like stitches were truly necessary, for which he was grateful. He ripped off part of the dust cloth on the couch and used the piece of fabric to wipe away the remaining trickle of blood.

Standing a little unsteadily, he shuffled to the door and looked out into the same long stretch of hallway. Shrugging, he chose right.

A real sense of foreboding curled tightly in his gut as he walked down the dark hall, opening doors more for the illumination from the windows than from any real sense of purpose. He fumbled with his cell phone, trying a number, any number, but there wasn't even a dial tone, only static. In frustration he threw it down the hall, skittering and clacking for what seemed long moments before finally shushing to a halt somewhere ahead of him.

He felt eyes at his back, but there was no one there. Prickles of dread ran up and down his spine, and still he resisted looking behind him for a bogey man that wasn't there. The feeling doggedly persisted, though, and he walked faster, shadows nipping at his heels in the oppressive blackness.

The hallway finally curved around toward the center of the house, and a tiny thread of remembrance lightened his step. Sure enough, just around the corner he could see a faint light glowing through the door. Youji jogged the last couple of steps, throwing open the door and stopping short as his eyes took in the room.

Aya lay on the bed, as he had before, but this time his arms were bound above his head, the silky rope tied tightly to the headboard. His legs were spread, tied with more rope to the corner posts at the foot of the bed. The oil lamp on the bedside table flickered, casting an orange light over his pale skin, hiding the scars Youji knew were there and making it look warm, inviting to touch. Aya turned his head slowly to look at Youji.

"Youji," he said softly, almost a whisper. "I've been waiting for you."

All of a sudden, Youji was hard, harder than he'd ever been in his entire life, and he wanted only Aya. He somehow managed to cross the few feet to the side of the bed, staring down at Aya's naked body, mesmerized by the play of light on his skin.

"Youji," Aya whispered again.

Youji reached out a trembling hand and brushed his fingertips down Aya's chest. Aya arched into his touch, pulling on his bonds already, not really fighting to get free, but testing the limits. His cock was slender, curving elegantly toward his navel, already hard and dripping precum in shining drops onto his stomach. Youji bit his lip and cupped it in his palm.

Aya's hips bucked and he tried to push himself further into Youji's hand, hissing out a long frustrated breath when Youji took his hand away and knelt on the bed.

"Your wound," Youji said, seeing the gauze taped to Aya's right side.

"It's fine," Aya breathed. "Take me."

Time moved strangely, start and stop, a blurry slow motion as Youji almost ripped his clothes off, everything, even his watch, flinging them all over the side of the bed, fumbling in the first aid kit for some kind of lotion and slicking his fingers, sinking one into Aya as he arched in his restraints, eyes closed and fists clenched, mouth in a tight thin line that Youji had learned meant that he was keeping silent by will alone.

Aya bent his knees as much as he was able, pushing his hips upward and whispering raggedly, "Now, Youji. Now."

Youji gripped Aya's hips and, ignoring the protesting twinge from the cut on his abdomen, pushed, pushed past resistance and slid all the way in in one long stroke. They both stayed still for a moment, gasping, until Aya twitched impatiently, twisting his hands and glaring at Youji with slitted eyes.

He moved after that, in the rhythm that they both knew, and he knew he could never stop, not even if he wanted to. Aya was too deep, too tight, too warm and beautiful and he wanted nothing more than to bury his cock inside that body that was _his_, all his, forever.

Aya came soon after, jerking the ropes binding his hands, his muscles clenching so hard it almost hurt. His seed splashed everywhere, trails of it winding down his chest and stomach, splattering on the bed sheets. Youji was just a few strokes behind him, thrusting hard into Aya's body until he was spent. He knelt on his hands and knees over Aya, sweat dripping from his face to plop noiselessly onto Aya's already damp chest.

"Untie me," Aya said, and Youji managed to pick the knot above his hands loose before he fell asleep again.

------

Youji woke up on the couch. He tried to roll over and hit the cushions on the back, and he knew he was back in the room where they had both started, rain pounding on the windows, and Aya's coat thrown over him. Covering his eyes with his arm, more for comfort than to block out what little light there was, he tried to breathe deeply, calming his panic, and think the situation through.

Was it real?

Blood on his hands. So that was real. His watch was on upside down. His cell phone was gone, lost somewhere in the endless hallways of this godforsaken mansion. So it was all real.

Where was Aya?

Youji stumbled upright, wavering on his feet. He clutched his stomach and almost doubled over in pain. There was a lot of blood. Youji could feel it slowly seeping through his fingers to silently drop onto the dusty floor. Ripping off a long piece of the dust cover on the couch, he bound the wound as best as he could. From what he could tell, it was deeper on one side, and most likely needed stitches. But there was nothing he could do about it until he found Aya.

He took Aya's trench coat with him this time, draping it over one arm and hugging it close. Peering out the door into the stygian darkness beyond, he debated over which direction to take. Left had led to Aya. Right had led to Aya. Shrugging, he chose left.

The same almost blackness. The same wooden floors. The same rooms, furniture draped in dusty sheets. He trudged down the hallway, opening doors automatically, almost not seeing the contents of the rooms anymore, wearily cataloguing dust cover after dust cover in one corner of his mind. The hallway curved around, and he followed it, but no door appeared with light behind it.

Confused, Youji looked back the way he had come, but saw only gaping doorways marching off into the darkness. He hadn't missed it. He kept walking, hoping that it was just down a few hundred more feet, just around the next curve.

The hallway stretched on, though, and he felt his panic rise as the door did not appear as he had expected. The darkness pressed in around him almost like a living thing, robbing him of conscious thought and breath. He dropped Aya's coat and started to run, blindly stumbling and staggering into walls, flinging open doors, not even seeing the contents of the empty rooms. He whispered Aya's name over and over, like a chant, willing him to appear, willing him into existence again, willing this house to disappear.

And then he saw the light. Sobbing for breath, he stood for a moment, hand on the door knob, dread forcing bile to rise in his throat. Suddenly, he didn't want to open the door, didn't want Aya to be on the bed in the orange glow of the oil lamp. In the calm that had descended upon him, he knew he wanted Aya to be on the couch where he had left him with an intensity that almost brought tears to his eyes. Hurt, for sure, but safe. Throughout his relationship with Aya, that was what he had wanted to give him the most. Safety. To shield him from the world and the devastating events that had started him on his path to revenge, to take bullets for him and push him out of the path of oncoming cars, to tend his wounds and soothe his anger and insist that he deserved love.

But here, in this house, he couldn't seem to hold onto time, to hold onto Aya and protect him from ...

From what?

He opened the door.

The first thing Youji saw was the blood. Blood dripped down Aya's arms, bound above his head with wire, his own wire, Youji knew with a certainty like despair; blood was spattered over Aya's chest and his bare legs, also bound with wire. His heart stuttered in his chest as Aya slowly turned his head to stare at him, a thin trickle of blood smearing across his cheek.

_Youji_, he mouthed, pain twisting his mouth as his chest rose and fell in quick shallow breaths. Blood dripped also, Youji saw, from the gash on Aya's side. The gash that looked as if it has been inflicted by a knife, or by a ...

Aya's katana dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. It hit the wooden floorboards with a hollow _clang_, ringing through the empty room like a bell. His stomach wound throbbed in time with his heartbeats. "No," he whispered hoarsely, dropping to his knees, feeling dizzy, feeling faint -

------

Youji opened his eyes, blinking slowly. His head was pounding and he brought a hand up to his forehead to soothe away some of the pain. His right arm twinged, and he frowned, trying to recall exactly how he had injured it.

"Glad to see you're awake," a familiar voice said.

Turning his head, he squinted through the railings of the hospital bed he suddenly realized he was in. "Manx," he said wearily.

"I'll cut right to the chase," Manx said, pulling the lone plastic chair forward and sitting down. "Due to the current situation, Weiss is being restructured. Kritiker is pulling you off the team and assigning you a special solo mission. This mission is critical to our continued well-being as an organization, and -"

"Wait," Youji cut her off. "I'm being reassigned? Why?"

Manx looked at him calculatingly. "To complete a special solo mission," she repeated.

Youji closed his eyes. He caught at a hint of memory desperately - Aya, and blood. Too much blood. "I want to see Aya," he said. "Let me see my team."

"Weiss is no longer your team," Manx said coldly. "It's best if there's a clean break." She uncrossed her elegant legs and stood up.

"Wait!" Youji tried to sit up, wincing as stitches on his stomach pulled, and torn muscles protested. "Why am I off the team? What happened?" He felt a hot trail of blood slowly trickle down his side.

"I am not at liberty to discuss that at the present time." Manx raised one sculpted eyebrow. "And you should know by now, Balinese, that you have no choice."

"But what about Aya?" Youji was feeling desperate now, desperate enough to expose the entirety of their relationship to Kritiker, desperate enough that his gut was curled into tiny, cold knots at the thought of never seeing his team again, never seeing Aya again.

Manx just gave him a small, knowing smile, and shut the door quietly in the face of his distress.

Youji buried his face in his hands and tried to remember something, _anything_, whether there had been a mission or if he had gone out, but all he could drag from his mind was empty rooms and dark hallways, snatches of Aya's pale face, and blood, always blood everywhere.

"Where's Aya?" he asked softly, but the silence held no answers for him.

_end_

------

_What does it all mean?_

According to my French dictionary, _trompe l'oeil_ means a bluff or fake (lit. to deceive the eye).

The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate, by Eugene Ehrlich, lists it as a synonym for visual deception.

Webster's Unabridged also states that it is a visual deception, but goes on to say that it is used especially to describe certain types of paintings.

And, finally, Dictionary.com says that it is a style of painting that gives an illusion of photographic reality.


End file.
